Should I continue seeing my counselor?!


Question: Should I continue seeing my counselor?
OK so a little about me -

I am a college student in my second year. Starting around my second year of high school (4 years ago) I had major depression issues and contemplated suicide quite often. Well I didn't start seeing a counselor until last year and it completely changed my life. After about 2 months I stopped seeing him (as I wasn't put on any medications and I seemed to be pretty much better).

Well, I decided to start seeing him again this year. I have appointments that are spaced about once every week and a half. Mostly I go to the appointments and it just gives me a chance to talk about problems that are bothering me, and just talk for about 45 minutes which most people don't let me do (I have a tendency to talk a LOT about things, its my only real way to relieve my stress). I really like getting the chance to talk to my counselor every so often because I get to have intelligent conversation with someone about pretty much anything I can think of.

The only problem is that I am no longer depressed and I am pretty much just paying to have someone to talk to. The only other people I trust enough to talk to for hours on end are my parents (who live about 2000 miles away), and two friends at my college. The problem is that my parents are both busy with work during the day (I seem to like to talk more during the day than at night), and both of my friends are extremely busy with school work so I'm lucky if I get to see them more than once a week for a couple of hours.

Also, I have tried other ways of getting my daily talking out. I tried writing in a journal for a while but that didn't work very well as I can never really get feedback from my own writing. I have also tried talking to my roommate (who I share a dorm room with, and I see him probably 4+ hours a day while we are awake). The problem with my roommate is that he is quite busy as well and I feel bad always talking to him for hours and hours just about my thoughts and things that bother me and such.

Now to make the situation worse, the place where I get my counseling done (which is done through my university) is pretty much the only place I can afford to go (or at least I think so). I don't have a medical need for a therapist or counselor as I no longer have a mental illness so getting my insurance to foot the bill would be tough. And on top of that, my counseling center I go to has a limit on how many sessions someone can go to per year because they believe in a short-term healing process.

So, what should I do? I have about 10 appointments left for the year and I don't mind using them, but what about after that? Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Answers:

I'd say stick with it.

Yeah, you might be doing great right now, but the reason you're doing great right now is... Pause for dramatic effect... You're seeing a counsellor. It's kind of like... say you have a car that's always leaking oil. So you have to tighten the oil thingy all the time or else it'll start to leak more. After a while you don't say, "Oh, well, it's not leaking, so I don't have to tighten the thingy." And if you stop, then don't be surprised when it starts leaking again.

Look, everyone needs therapy. We're all of us a little crazy. So if you can afford it, then do it. It never hurts. Not ever.



You might bring this up to your therapist. Maybe he can help you understand why you need to talk so much, and it would be an actual reason to be at the appointments. Maybe you can find something you're really interested in, and join others who have the same interest. That would give you other people to talk to.




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